Thursday, June 18, 2015

Today is the 200th Anniversary of the battle known as Waterloo, a major event in European history, in which an army of allies led by the Duke of Wellington & Gebhard von Blücher defeated Napoleon once and for all (this was his comeback attempt). Though we Nerdy History Girls prefer to focus on social history rather than the politics and wars so many associate (and not happily) with the study of history, this, like posts dealing with remembrance days, touches on the human side of war, and thus falls well within our purview. I didn’t think I could do better than re-posting the following.

~~~

Some years ago, in Miss Wonderful,
I had a hero suffering from what’s now called Post-Traumatic Stress
Disorder. This was a result of my sticking him in the middle of the
Battle of Waterloo and subjecting him to something very like the ordeal
that Colonel Frederick Cavendish Ponsonby, against all odds, survived.

Since,
over the years, Colonel Ponsonby turned up more than once in my
reading, I can’t say exactly when or in what book he first caught my
attention. In Richard Rush’s A Residence at the Court of London,
a gentleman “tall but limping” is identified thus: "Colonel
Ponsonby; he was left for dead at Waterloo; the cavalry it was thought
had trampled upon him.” Elizabeth Longford’s Wellington: The Years of the Sword,
summed up in a few unforgettable lines what Ponsonby endured:
“Frederick Ponsonby, desperately wounded first by French sabres and then
by Polish lances, ridden over and tossed by the Prussians, robbed, used
as a musket-rest by a tirailleur and as a place to die on by a mortally
wounded soldier, but later found alive by a British infantryman who
mounted guard over him till morning...”

I added a bit
of another officer's experience to my hero’s, and made up my own account
of how he survived injuries that should have killed him several times
over (no antibiotics!!!—he'd been stabbed all over the place, & the
doctors treated him by bleeding him some more!!!)—but the great kernel
of truth is there, and the credit belongs to Colonel Ponsonby (later a
General and Sir Frederick), one tough gentleman.

Ye
of the Nerdy History persuasion can easily imagine how thrilled I was
recently to find, not a summary of his experience in a book by or about
someone else, but his very own account—all thanks to the magic of Google
books— in Ackermann’s Repository of arts, literature, fashions of 1817. You can read the whole story here.
I
think the just-the-facts, ma'am approach makes it all the more
poignant, and conveys in a powerful way the experience of being in the
middle of that battle. What with the rumors flying about who was
winning, who was losing, who was dead, who wasn’t, I wondered all the
more how anybody knew what the devil was going on anywhere.

Loretta reports:

Some years ago, in Miss Wonderful,
I had a hero suffering from what’s now called Post-Traumatic Stress
Disorder. This was a result of my sticking him in the middle of the
Battle of Waterloo and subjecting him to something very like the ordeal
that Colonel Frederick Cavendish Ponsonby, against all odds, survived.

Since, over the years, Colonel Ponsonby turned up more than once in my
reading, I can’t say exactly when or in what book he first caught my
attention. In Richard Rush’s A Residence at the Court of London,
a gentleman “tall but limping” is identified thusly: "Colonel
Ponsonby; he was left for dead at Waterloo; the cavalry it was thought
had trampled upon him.” Elizabeth Longford’s Wellington: The Years of the Sword,
summed up in a few unforgettable lines what Ponsonby endured:
“Frederick Ponsonby, desperately wounded first by French sabres and then
by Polish lances, ridden over and tossed by the Prussians, robbed, used
as a musket-rest by a tirailleur and as a place to die on by a mortally
wounded soldier, but later found alive by a British infantryman who
mounted guard over him till morning...”

I added a bit of another officer's experience to my hero’s, and made up
my own account of how he survived injuries that should have killed him
several times over (no antibiotics!!!—he'd been stabbed all over the
place, & the doctors treated him by bleeding him some more!!!)—but
the great kernel of truth is there, and the credit belongs to Colonel
Ponsonby (later a General and Sir Frederick), one tough gentleman.

Ye of the Nerdy History persuasion can easily imagine how thrilled I was
recently to find, not a summary of his experience in a book by or about
someone else, but his very own account—all thanks to the magic of
Google books— in Ackermann’s Repository of arts, literature, fashions of 1817. You can read the whole story here.
I think the just-the-facts, ma'am approach makes it all the more
poignant, and conveys in a powerful way the experience of being in the
middle of that battle. What with the rumors flying about who was
winning, who was losing, who was dead, who wasn’t, I wondered all the
more how anybody knew what the devil was going on anywhere.
- See more at:
http://twonerdyhistorygirls.blogspot.com/2010/10/colonel-ponsonbys-waterloo-ordeal.html#sthash.0KWCrnSp.dpuf

Loretta reports:

Some years ago, in Miss Wonderful,
I had a hero suffering from what’s now called Post-Traumatic Stress
Disorder. This was a result of my sticking him in the middle of the
Battle of Waterloo and subjecting him to something very like the ordeal
that Colonel Frederick Cavendish Ponsonby, against all odds, survived.

Since, over the years, Colonel Ponsonby turned up more than once in my
reading, I can’t say exactly when or in what book he first caught my
attention. In Richard Rush’s A Residence at the Court of London,
a gentleman “tall but limping” is identified thusly: "Colonel
Ponsonby; he was left for dead at Waterloo; the cavalry it was thought
had trampled upon him.” Elizabeth Longford’s Wellington: The Years of the Sword,
summed up in a few unforgettable lines what Ponsonby endured:
“Frederick Ponsonby, desperately wounded first by French sabres and then
by Polish lances, ridden over and tossed by the Prussians, robbed, used
as a musket-rest by a tirailleur and as a place to die on by a mortally
wounded soldier, but later found alive by a British infantryman who
mounted guard over him till morning...”

I added a bit of another officer's experience to my hero’s, and made up
my own account of how he survived injuries that should have killed him
several times over (no antibiotics!!!—he'd been stabbed all over the
place, & the doctors treated him by bleeding him some more!!!)—but
the great kernel of truth is there, and the credit belongs to Colonel
Ponsonby (later a General and Sir Frederick), one tough gentleman.

Ye of the Nerdy History persuasion can easily imagine how thrilled I was
recently to find, not a summary of his experience in a book by or about
someone else, but his very own account—all thanks to the magic of
Google books— in Ackermann’s Repository of arts, literature, fashions of 1817. You can read the whole story here.
I think the just-the-facts, ma'am approach makes it all the more
poignant, and conveys in a powerful way the experience of being in the
middle of that battle. What with the rumors flying about who was
winning, who was losing, who was dead, who wasn’t, I wondered all the
more how anybody knew what the devil was going on anywhere.
- See more at:
http://twonerdyhistorygirls.blogspot.com/2010/10/colonel-ponsonbys-waterloo-ordeal.html#sthash.0KWCrnSp.dpuf

3
comments:

The battle of Waterloo was a backdrop to this week's episode of the excellent BBC adaption of "Johnathan Strange & Mr Norrell", it amused me that right at the end of all the bloody, muddy carnage, Wellington turned up, in full uniform without a speck of mud /blood or otherwise upon his person, to blithely announce that the battle was over and Napoleon defeated as though he was in an English drawing room.

I've been watching the commemoration of the anniversary in Belgium, with the descendants of the main commanders. Thanks for the link to this perspective. I do have to say that the word 'thus(ly)' was quite jarring, as it doesn't exist. Sorry to be so picky, (I'm an English teacher) but the adverb is thus.

Madeleine, you're so right. I must have had my brain stuck in a 19th C magazine at the time, or had a moment of reckless disregard for grammar, or make-up-your-own-lame-excuse. Sorry to make you shudder. I will repair it forthwith!

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A Polite Explanation

There’s a big difference in how we use history. But we’re equally nuts about it. To us, the everyday details of life in the past are things to talk about, ponder, make fun of -- much in the way normal people talk about their favorite reality show.

We talk about who’s wearing what and who’s sleeping with whom. We try to sort out rumor or myth from fact. We thought there must be at least three other people out there who think history’s fascinating and fun, too. This blog is for them.